Chapter 3 #3
“Stop reading my mind,” I complain.
“Sorry,” he says. “It’s just I can feel your alienation. And I want you to know that it is normal. We won’t be here for that long.”
“Oh? We’re not staying in the geometric marble hellscape?”
That was rude of me, but I’d really like to be somewhere that the walls feel like they really exist. I want to be somewhere there’s ladybirds, or at least a bug or two.
I guess the station didn’t have plants or bugs on it either that I saw, but it felt more alive than this place.
This feels like a place that only exists in theory, and I don’t think I can survive in theory.
As the day wears on, it is impossible to tell how much time is passing. The sun doesn’t seem to exist, and the sky does not change. The clouds do not drift. I realize, with a start, that there is no breeze. The sky may as well be painted on.
Every new realization I encounter makes me feel slightly more uncomfortable.
Freak is the only part of this whole thing that makes me feel real.
I snuggle as close to him as I can, I close my eyes, and I feel his touch, his steady three-dimensional existence.
The warmth of his body and the slight motions of it remind me I still exist, even if the place I am in doesn’t.
* * *
Freak
We are treated to a welcome feast, and of course my pet has questions. I thought she might settle once she got fed, but even though I keep her in my arms and offer her food from my hand, she manages to ask them.
“Is this your family?”
“We do not have families the way you are accustomed to thinking about them, but yes,” I tell her. “These are the ones I love.”
“They’re pretty,” she says. “Is everyone in your species ridiculously hot?”
“I don’t know,” I laugh. “Maybe? To your eyes, probably. You have a way of seeing the best in the world.”
“I do?”
She seems surprised.
“Yes, pet,” I chuckle. “You see me for much of what I am, I think, but I am sure you adorn me with more, besides.”
She blushes, recognizing it for the compliment it is to both of us.
I love this little creature. I have known her for less than one of her days, but there is a connection between us that those of my species would recognize as fate.
This was always intended to happen. She was made for me, and I was made for her.
She snuggles up against my chest and closes her eyes. She is tired. This realm has that effect on a lot of creatures who are not from here. We won’t be able to stay long. That works for me, for I do not want to stay long. I need to return to the front lines.
“Tasin, you’re supposed to be speaking with us. We’ve missed you.” Alara chides me, sending her voice into my mind. Once upon a time, Alara was the daughter of the matriarch. Now she is the matriarch.
It was not always certain that she would take the command position.
For a long time, it was considered that I might be suitable to command the home realm.
But I spent too much time in the worlds of the real, and somewhere between my being captured and now, she assumed the role.
One could be bitter about such a thing, but of course, if she has command, then it can be assumed she was always destined to have it.
There are no accidents in our cosmology.
Her disapproval would have concerned me at one point, but I have just suffered a series of lengthy indignities and pains that has made me much less patient and far less interested in bowing to hierarchy of any kind.
“You can speak to me while I tend to my pet,” I respond. “She is still new to me. And this is a world she is not safe in, so forgive me if I do not take my eyes off her.”
I feel the pout.
Alara approaches us, a smile frozen on her face.
It is designed to make my pet comfortable.
I can tell by the way she stiffens against my chest that it is not having that effect at all.
My pet is intimidated. Well, she should be.
Alara is powerful. She has an ability to twist the fibers of reality in ways few of our kind can.
Some say she might be the most powerful matriarch we have ever had.
“Can’t you put her down for a moment?”
I don’t want to put her down. After everything that has happened for the past few years, I feel as though she is anchoring me to myself.
The studies done on me were not pleasant.
The scientists who had me in their grasp tried to take me apart in hundreds of different ways.
I was hurt terribly and repeatedly, but with my pet in my arms I feel something close to normal.
The others have missed me, but they do not want to address the events of my captivity either. We are all skirting the issue, over and over. I suspect they know more than they want to share with me. How could they not? We are all uniquely connected, our consciousness a mesh we all weave.
“No,” I say aloud. “You can speak to me with her here.”
Mara smirks against my chest. She cannot hear Alara, but she is very good at working out what is happening in the absence of information. Humans are talented in that regard. What they lack in sophistication, they make up for with instinct.
* * *
Mara
These aliens seem so above it all, so psychic and ethereal. But I can see what they are. I can see the power in their bodies, the protective scaling, the claws and the teeth. These are predators as surely as any animals are. And Freak already told me they are at war.
The female who keeps circling us like a hungry beast wants Freak. She calls him something else, but I stick with the name he gave me. I like it better anyway.
She settles down nearby, in a chaise chair, and she engages with my owner. It feels natural to think of him that way, though I would not say it out loud. I am still free, still independent in the recesses of my mind.
I don’t know what is passing between the two of them, but I can feel Freak getting more tense the longer their association continues. Whatever they’re magically saying to one another, it’s pissing him off.
I want to help, but I have no way of originally interrupting. So I lift my head from his chest, turn to his neck, and bite the scaled side of it. I can feel the scaled texture of his skin beneath my teeth and tongue. It’s an interesting texture, firm, but warm.
He smirks, and relaxes. I see the sharp teeth emerge from under his upper lip as he smiles. It’s not a threat, though. I think he is pleased.
“You shouldn’t let your pet bite,” the woman says out loud for my benefit.
“You shouldn’t let people tell you what to do,” I respond.
“Easy,” Freak says to me, patting my rear warningly. “Let’s not be disrespectful.”
“Is she trained at all? Or is she going to behave as she likes?” The woman is really pushing things now. She doesn’t have to talk about me at all, but if she really wanted to, she could do it without me knowing. By speaking out loud in a tongue I understand, she’s doing this on purpose.
“I do what I want,” I say. “I’m a human. And I have a mission.”
“Oh,” she says. “A mission?”
“Yes. I am going to get water to save my world.”
“No, you’re not,” she says. “Silly little thing. The world you came from is ordained to suffer from a drought that will eventually claim everything. Dust begets dust, and human habitation rarely leaves an environment better for it. It is just as well Tasin took pity on you. You will be the last of that line.”
She turns to Freak and smiles a little too broadly. “You should really find a good human to mate her. She could produce cute little babies to sell.”
And that’s when I lunge at her.
The notion of letting some strange man have his way with me, make me swell with babies, then sell them. It’s obscene. It’s evil. And for her to suggest it, means she is evil too.
“Hey!” Freak grips me tightly and pulls me back down, this time over his lap rather than on it.
He starts to spank me hard and fast without so much as saying a word at first. Then I start to wail as all the handsome aliens watch me get my ass whipped.
It is deeply embarrassing, not to mention painful given how much trouble I have been in lately.
It feels as though I am constantly being thrashed in between being praised for my behavior.
“We do not rush at anybody,” he says. “Bad girl. You know better than to do that. What would you have done if you had made contact? Would you have bitten the matriarch? What would have happened then? Do you know what she could do to you? She could eradicate you from the face of existence with a snap of her fingers if she so decided.”
This feels harder than anything he has done to me before. Harder, meaner, more intense, and enough to make tears run down my face.
* * *
Freak
I spank her until she cries, because I have to. If I do not demonstrate a proper punishment to Alara’s satisfaction, she will likely take some kind of vengeance on my pet regardless of how I feel about her. Alara is dangerous, and that is enough to make me certain to ensure she is satisfied.
I bare her rear, depriving her of modesty before the crowd.
I feel a pulse of excitement at doing this to her, feeling the sudden increase in vulnerability.
I can scent her emotions, feel her body and her mind reacting.
She doesn’t know what to do with herself.
She can’t quite keep up with events. Her body is reacting as it should, but her mind will take longer.
When I am done, I hold her in place over my lap and rub her blazing bare rear as she sniffles.
“I am jealous,” Alara says. “I wonder what it would be like to be handled in such a way. But a matriarch cannot be a small human pet. Some of us must maintain authority.”
“I am sure you can find a mate to take you in hand,” I assure her.
She laughs inside my mind.
I have a flash of someone. Some… thing. It is very brief, and then it is completely gone.
“I think I should take her to a more human space,” I tell her. “It has been wonderful to see you all again, but humans need to be in meat space.”